We join the authors in this special issue in their call to embrace a culture of evaluation. Obstacles to change are formidable. Educators debate their purpose--provide knowledge or achieve environmental goals--and we have limited evidence of the effectiveness of environmental programs and policies. Change requires collaboration across…

In the domain of school-based tobacco control, there is a large gap between the research being performed and the type of research needed to inform school-based prevention activities. The tobacco module of the school health action planning and evaluation system is a data collection and feedback system designed to support school-based tobacco…

How do evaluation practitioners make choices when they evaluate a program? What function do evaluation theories play in practice? In this article, I report on an exploratory study that examined evaluation practices in France. The research began with observations of practitioners' activities, with a particular focus on the phases of evaluation…

Measurement in early childhood is an increasingly large-scale endeavor addressing purposes of accountability, program improvement, child outcomes, and intervention decision making for individual children. The Early Communication Indicator (ECI) is a measure relevant to intervention decision making for infants and toddlers, including response to…

This paper synthesizes the existing literature on stakeholder involvement in program evaluation, drawing a basic distinction between deep involvement of a few versus less active involvement of a broad range of stakeholders. The paper then comments on the case studies described in this special issue and integrates them with previously published…

This excerpt from the opening plenary asks evaluators to consider two questions regarding learning and evaluation: (a) How do evaluators know if, how, when, and what people are learning during an evaluation? and (b) In what ways can evaluation be a learning experience? To answer the first question, evaluators can apply the commonplaces of…

The paper aims to analyse several scientific approaches how to evaluate, implement or choose learning content and software suitable for personalised users/learners needs. Learning objects metadata customisation method as well as the Method of multiple criteria evaluation and optimisation of learning software represented by the experts' additive…

This article describes an initiative to evaluate the impact of educational psychologists' (EPs') casework. Previous studies have often focussed on evaluating processes or reducing outcomes to measurable units. The authors argue that qualitative research methods can be used to illuminate EP effectiveness. They describe a real world and…

In this article, the authors provide an overview and critically analyze three successful faculty-developed urban K-12 science outreach programs. They consider a successful outreach program as one that has been sustained for at least five years after initial funding, and has provided empirically-based research findings from the program.…

Considering the high levels of time and money invested in teacher professional development programmes in information technologies over recent decades, questions arise as to how effective these programmes have been and by whose lights we are to judge. Based on a critical review of the evaluations of several of our own action-research-based…

My Class Activities (MCA) is an instrument that has been used for evaluation of university-based Saturday enrichment programs, but was originally normed using students in regular schools. A sample of MCA scores from 826 students in grades 3-8 from a Saturday enrichment program was used. Four different MCA models were evaluated: (a) the original…

This study examines two community college instructional support programs to explore the effectiveness of an evaluation model--responsive evaluation theory--that may ease the tensions between a concern over programs' processes and reporting requirements for program outcomes. The study uses a comparative qualitative case study design and applies…

Key stakeholders who implement Supported Education may find themselves asking two questions: (1) Has Supported Education been implemented as planned?; and (2) Has Supported Education resulted in the expected outcomes? Asking these two questions and using the answers to help improve Supported Education are critical for ensuring the success of one's…

This article introduces a waka tino whakarawea model for evaluating programmes and services for Maori learners. It is based on a set of underlying principles identified in the author's PhD study (Bevan-Brown, 2002). Explanations are provided for eight principles: kaupapa Maori; importance, relevance and beneficence; participation; empowerment,…

The author analyzes the growth and nature of internal evaluation from the 1960s to the present and suggests that internal evaluation has been on the increase because of its perceived importance. Although the 1960s were characterized by a rich intellectual development of evaluation theory and practice, the fiscal conservatism of the 1980s ushered…